Social doctors … ignore all the effects on other members of society than the ones they have in view.
Tag: William Graham Sumner
(1840-1910) American academic and professor at Yale College
Zero-sum socialism
To lift one man up we push another down … trampling on those who are trying to help themselves.
Freedom from parasites
The workingman needs no improvement in his condition except to be freed from the parasites who are living on him.
Selective improvement
Nearly all the schemes for ‘improving the condition of the working man’ involve an elevation of some working men at the expense of other working men.
Producers must have rights
The forgotten man … ought to be first and always remembered … What … becomes of the natural rights of the one whose energies are to be diverted from his own interests?
Stop penalizing the productive
The forgotten man is weighted down with the cost and burden of the schemes for making everyone happy … take some of the burdens off him … It will only be justice for him, and society will greatly gain by it.
Keep your eye on the prize
If you learn to look for the forgotten man and to care for him, you will be very skeptical toward all the philanthropic and humanitarian schemes.
True justice depends on true liberty
Liberty means the security given to each man that … he shall dispose of the produce exclusively as he chooses. It is impossible to know whence any definition or criterion of justice can be derived, if it is not deduced from this view of things; or if it is not the definition of justice that each shall enjoy the fruit of his own labor and self-denial.
Liberty for all
The reason why liberty … is a good thing is that it means leaving people to live out their own lives in their own way, while we do the same.
What government must to do be considered legitimate
Leave each man to run his career in life in his own way, only guaranteeing to him that whatever he does in the way of industry, economy, prudence, sound judgment, etc., shall redound to his own welfare and shall not be diverted to someone else’s benefit.